Clutching a token cup of coffee, Gore leaned in, and nearly out of his seat.
‘Yes, but this system, it’s going to put people on a rubbish dump. Kids.’
‘No. Everybody gets another chance. Look, John, the way things have got, there just has to be a bit of coercion into work. It’s called treating people as adults. All of us, at some stage, we’ve had to just swallow our pride and do things we didn’t like – to get on, to show willing. Test ourselves, even. I mean, it’s an opportunity, really, if you look at it. I don’t want to see anyone on the breadline. But I don’t want them dependent neither – on “good turns”. There has to be provision. But it can’t be free, as such. You have to sign up. Get yourself to class in the morning.’
Pallister rose sluggishly and went to his window, refilled his mug from a tepid cafetière, took thirsty gulps. His enervation was truly pronounced.
‘Had a day of it, have you?’
‘Just the usual. Problems, problems … Housing, as usual. Schools, kids having bother in school, or they can’t get into schools. And then an awful lot of people who are just depressed, it seems to me.’ Pallister shook his head. ‘You must get a lot of what I get. People just stalking up to have a bloody good rant in your face. Pissed off about some rubbish in their lives they can’t get shot of, but they reckon you can – in some sort of magical way they don’t understand but they’re sure exists.’ The MP slumped back into his chair. ‘So. What do you do? You tell them you’ll look into it. You’ll talk to someone. Maybe go with them to have it out face to face. But there’s a procedure. You have to do a bit of checkingup too – just to be sure the grievance is legitimate, right? Before you go barging in. Because some people can see everybody’s wrongs but their own.’ He threw up his hands. ‘But tell them all that, and their eyes go narrow like, “Aw right, what are you then?” I don’t know … I mean, what do you say to a woman tells you her boy’s gonna get shot? For some drug-related rubbish? A mother’s love, it’s pitiful, isn’t it?’
Gore would have liked to have rebutted Pallister at some point. But he needed some moments to alight on an element that jarred. ‘There are times, y’know, when you sound more Geordie than others.’
‘I’ve lived in Newcastle all me life, John.’
‘Yeah, but Susannah was the same, after she went to college. Turned posh, but just gave it a little bit Geordie now and again. For whatever reason.’
Pallister massaged his brow. ‘John, I tell you, I’m getting weary of you sitting there drinking my coffee, trying to kick my arse all round this office.’
‘I don’t want your coffee,’ said Gore, setting his mug down on the carpet.
‘It’s not about coffee, man. Look – here’s what. What you’ve told us, I’m happy to look into. If I have to, I’ll raise this lad’s issue with the right persons. So how about a bit of good will, eh? How about getting onboard with me? For a perfectly harmless bit of putting wor heads together?’
‘You still want to steal my thunder?’
‘What bloody thunder, man? I saw your show, you had what? Three dozen people in your little school hall?’
‘There were fifty.’
‘You reckon? Well, we start working together and you’ll double your numbers. I know you’re on the radio and all that, but it’s not going to get you closer to the people who can change things.’
‘What’s it about, then? This forum? Where is it?’
‘Blackwater Hotel on the Quayside, very nice. It’s just a day’s conference, a panel, a few speeches, bits on the side. Look, all I’m asking is you sit on a platform with me. Speak your mind. You can do that, can’t you?’
‘The agenda. What is it? Can we discuss it?’
‘Agenda’s already done, it’s fixed. But I’ll get you a copy. Ed!’ He shouted through the open doorway to his diligent researcher.
‘Fixed by who?’
‘Me and some other people I’ve got onboard. I can’t just do it with you, John. Listen, you’ll meet them. And your voice is just as valid as anyone’s. No one has veto, my mind’s not made up and nor is anyone else’s.’
‘I just want to know what I’m getting into.’
‘Well, I can’t tell you yet, John. I’m not saying it’s all laid out. I am saying, give it a whirl. I’d value your input. If not? Fine, let’s shake hands and you’ll not hear from me again, I promise.’
Gore knew what he would do. He dallied only in the sudden realisation of how much he would have missed these little colloquies had he chosen otherwise. He thrust out his hand.
‘Hang on – is that in or out?’
‘In.’
‘Right then.’ They shook, Pallister grinning broadly. ‘Good man. See, John, I’m telling you, there’s no time in this life to be shy.’
Chapter III
BY HAND OR BY BRAIN
1982–1989
‘Aren’t you going to speak?’ The sotto voce of Ms Polly Charlesworth posed a challenge, implied an expectation.
‘Not yet,’ Martin shushed. Her throaty whisper had a power to excite, but just for the moment she was annoying him.
They sat decorously side by side in the stalls, drinks at their feet, one very blonde undergraduate historian and her doctoral supervisor. The night’s business was one more factional meeting, the AGM of the Labour Coordinating Committee. Upon rising this late November Sunday of 1982 Martin had made a sober assessment of the odds that boredom might reign, and so decided to bring a date.
But there were easily a hundred and fifty bodies convened in the lofty Rutherford Hall of Newcastle Poly, a journey from Martin’s home of less than a mile. Others had come far, not least the mildly annoying foursome sat behind he and Polly, two youngish couples, nicely dressed, up from London. At a glance Martin imagined them en route to a Genesis gig, but he soon gathered that they were barristers, albeit very bored with the Bar, trading complaints of surly clerks and early hours. In fairness, they were also conferring in hushed, fraught tones about the main debate of the night.
‘Order please, let’s get started. Item one on the agenda is our debate on the register of groups. The LCC executive has met and commended – in line with Conference, and Clause Two of the constitution in respect of membership – that we support and add our name to the Party’s proposed register of internal groupings. Right, I know there’s plenty wanting to speak, so let’s try to get through this. The chair recognises Phil Conroy, Wallasey CLP.’
Martin bent his mouth toward Polly’s fragrant left lobe. ‘Here we go then. You’re gonna hear all the black arts tonight.’
The dogs in the street knew this ‘register’ palaver was a ploy to smoke out the Militant Tendency. Even his dad was wise to it, sat like Buddha in his empty bloody bookshop, living apart – to all intents and purposes – from Jenny. ‘There’s some say now’s the time to get in and take over the Party. Fine by me. But my lot want no part of it.’
Martin himself had no time for the Spartan cadres of Militant, their shifty efforts to infiltrate Labour’s grassroots committees. He could see the appeal of the subterfuge, were one a doggedly sanctimonious sort of a prick. But as a long-time GC delegate from his own branch, he knew that one only had to attend a few drear meetings to get oneself kicked upstairs – hardly a heroic assault on the Winter Palace.
Thus it pleased him that Ms Charlesworth was witness to tonight’s arguments, for they were all good grist to her thesis, provisionally titled ‘Splitting Airs and Graces: A History of Labour Defectors from H. M. Hyndman to The Limehouse Declaration’. As an alternative title he had proposed ‘The Masturbatory Tendency’, and earned a dirty laugh. Her line of inquiry he wholly endorsed, and much else besides. What was the secret of blondeness, its reign over him? A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. And there was Becky, stuck with her teacher-training homework back at their not-too-grotty flat on Gowland Avenue. It wasn’t a cushy life but they had all they needed for the moment. She didn’t contest his nights with Titch and Tony, or Satu
rdays consumed by the pub team, the Toon match and a gallon drunk in its aftermath. Her discernible interest in procreation, though, was not a productive line – indeed a reactionary tendency, as his dad had always said. His wage was just about fit for books and beer, and a long way shy of baby’s trousers.
Tonight he was struggling to find the passion for proceedings. More than the usual fissiparous Labour business, it was the collegiate setting that depressed him – the grim hall like a refectory, the plastic chairs and fag smoke and unsmiling faces over coat collars. Still, such was his life, he had made it all himself, vice-chair of Heaton & Wallsend Labour, area convenor for Labour Students, soon-to-be lecturer in history at the university. Already he had a useful little office, with a door that locked.
Up front, behind a small lectern, one more free-speech hero in donkey jacket and dungarees was slashing at the air with a finger. ‘Why should we go along with this farce? Why endorse a witch-hunt? We should affirm the rights of Labour members to hold any damn views they want, so long as they’re socialist views. These kinds of purges, comrades, they have a black history. I know I joined the Young Socialists to stamp out this sort of thing.’
Martin inclined his head to Polly’s. ‘I joined the Young Socialists to meet girls.’
She disdained him with her whole face. ‘You act like you’re above it all.’
‘Not a bit. I’m just sick of this game. Leftie versus Super-Leftie.’
‘Who do you like then?’
‘I’m for the register, Polly. I’m not for all these bloody Benn groupies.’
‘Wedgwood Benn,’ she sighed. ‘God, I lost my heart to that man.’
Short hairs of embarrassment distended on his neck. Admittedly, Benn was why Martin himself had signed up to the LCC, indeed the criterion for membership in those days. He had respected the man’s principles, his oratory, his fight to divest himself of a hereditary title. It was the obduracy since that had dispelled his charm – the air Benn carried of saviour-in-waiting, a different brand of flighty entitlement. He was a recruiting sergeant for the common-sense brigade of the SDP, and a lightning rod for Super-Leftie tosspots. They had been through all this in the LCC, a million fucking times, and Benn’s lot had stomped off in high dudgeon. And yet here they all were, scrapping away still in this dismal chamber. The queue of speakers had dwindled, and on balance there had been far too many northern voices, in praise of Real Socialism, dotingly acclaimed.
‘This could go either way,’ he murmured distractedly at his pofaced date.
‘Well, speak, then. Why don’t you get up and speak?’
He did have some notes. And yet – hateful sensation – he found himself torn, shy of this stage. Bollocks about witch-hunts apart, there was no easy way to take the high ground on either side of this borderline question – no straight route to applause. It was a compromise matter, and he was not a compromise man.
‘Oh, this is shit …’
Well, well. The low mutter came from behind Martin, for one of the Genesis quartet was getting to his feet, shifting along and out of his row.
‘I’ll let the posh lad from London go first,’ Martin whispered to Polly, realising too late that his whisper had carried. One of the posh lad’s associates prodded his shoulder over the seat back.
‘Actually, Martin, you’ll find Tony’s a Durham lad.’
Belatedly Martin recognised the Lancastrian accent of the Membership Secretary. ‘Oh, he’s from Durham is he?’ was as much as he could muster – a non-vintage rejoinder.
Tony from Durham was giving his name at top table, taking his place next in line, tugging at the colour of his checked shirt, stealing glances at some crumpled crib sheet. A bit nervous? Rightly so. He had clouds of hair, and a rather girlish ruby mouth that cleaved remarkably as he chanced a smile toward his friends.
‘The chair recognises Tony Blair, Hackney CLP.’
His figure didn’t inspire confidence as he stepped to the lectern, yet he was casting a hard lawyer’s look around the assembled. Martin decided he wouldn’t mind if the bloke took a pasting.
‘I have to say to you – those members who’ve criticised the register – you talk very passionately about what’s right. And I do respect that. I’m sure you’re sincere. But I must also say – you’re very sure of yourselves. Almost godlike in your assurance. And, I mean – I say that as someone’s who’s a churchgoer. Though I know that’s not so fashionable these days …’
He smiled a little abashedly into his chest, as well Martin thought he might.
‘You say your socialism’s pure. Purer than mine, I’m sure. Fine. But what do you want to do with that? Other than get people like me to admit we’re just rubbish, next to you lot? I do wonder, you know, how long we’re going to go over these same old arguments. I mean, what’s the ordinary Labour member to make of it? All this talk about witch-hunts – I have to tell you, it sounds self-indulgent. It looks horrendous. And for goodness’ sake, what’s actually in front of us? A simple request that we abide by the constitution and the decision of Conference. Our constitution says there shouldn’t be parties within the Party. That’s a fact. Yes, fine, socialists should stand up and argue their convictions. But the biggest party is the biggest party. And I don’t happen to think there should be sects within it. Full-time agitators. Whose so-called editorial board meet in secret and send down tablets in stone. There should be debate, yes. But also consent – consent that the majority view is the best view, if that view has prevailed democratically.’
‘Tony’ folded his crib sheet, apparently content he had expressed himself.
‘If you don’t like that – if you hate the rest of us so much – then what are you doing here?’
The applause in the room was muted, if prolonged and stormy at Martin’s shoulder. ‘There you go,’ Martin smiled thinly at Polly. ‘No need to speak. The posh lad nailed it.’ She looked at him in low esteem, and he could see that this had not been his finest couple of hours.
*
By days and by inches it crept across Martin that he had been coasting – dallying and waiting, in some dulled manner, for his life to begin. But in the autumn of 1983 the newly enrobed Dr Pallister was, as promised, appointed the history department’s youngest ever Lecturer/Researcher. Three weeks on, Becky cautiously told him she was five days late. The slight shakiness he felt in his legs was nothing compared to the quite unheralded sense of well-being. He circulated the news and, hostage made to fortune, swore a private vow to renounce the night, forswear Polly Charlesworth and pitch himself into productive labour. As Becky grew mildly gravid, he began to give classes at weekend schools for trade unionists, funded by the Transport and General. They seemed glad to have such a scholar among them, and the working men he taught were gratifyingly savvier – much less moping – than his workaday students.
His settled area of expertise was the political ambition and mobilisation by or on behalf of the British industrial working class. At times he felt like a professor in the pains of his own family. When the miners went out in March of ’84 he groaned inwardly, for he could see no good come of it. A strike was the last thing Martin would have wished on his Party – a forcing of sides, a resurrection of nostrums, old-style class war. But his dad, dependable as a prize pigeon, was up at Grey Monument every Saturday, rattling the tin.
Martin was otherwise engaged, for Alexander Pallister was born without complication on the 1st of September 1984. Becky’s exertions astounded him, and when he clutched the infant to his chest he felt yet more of a humble man. Though their quarrels were now incrementally more nerve-stretched, he accepted that he had shouldered a moral and emotional debt. He and Becky were married the following March, in the same week that the miners took the longest walk back, trudging in step behind banners and bands. Rodge and Pip attended the registry service with no apparent acrimony, no mention whatever of helmets or fascists.
*
As soon as Alex could toddle, Becky resumed her teacher training with the
extramural assistance of Martin’s mum, and an occasional hand from Dr Pallister himself on such days as he was allegedly grading papers at home. In the run-up to Christmas he drove Jenny and the boy over the river to the Metro Centre, a spanking new ‘super-mall’. It was his first visit, for he had political objections to the place. The land for the build had been reclaimed from the mud of Dunston Power Station, and great praise afforded its developer, Cameron Hall Limited. Martin disdained the chorus, for the egregious Mr John Hall struck him as the worst sort of bolshy, made-good, self-adoring Tory, one whose vaunted acumen seemed largely to consist of having flogged his stake at the earliest point, and to the dopey old Church Commissioners at that.
Inside the Metro he pushed his son’s chair along the promenades, half-appalled, half-amazed. It was a retailer’s paradise of a sort, Marks, Fraser’s, Boots, BHS. The masses were crammed in, families fully assembled, grannies and bairns in tow. He heard Scots and Brummie accents. The design seemed a stately conveyor to carry one round and up and down again, past each and every strip-lit shopfront, leaving one so limp and scant of fresh air that a stodgy meal on a tray and a drink in a plastic cup became suddenly enticing. All this, he suspected sourly, was likely why some of his lazier colleagues were writing long pseudo-scholarly papers – toying even with books – about fucking shopping.
In due course the Pallisters too rested their feet by a slow-bubbling fountain, and Alex was treated to a drooling ice-cream sundae. ‘Good place, isn’t it?’ offered Jenny, dipping into a small pink paper bag, unfurling a beaded scarf. Martin grunted. He had lingered only over a selection of compact-disc players, repelled by the expense of rebuying Who’s Next and Led Zeppelin IV in the minimal new format.
‘I don’t know,’ he winced. ‘I find it ugly. No character, man.’
‘Well now, this is Gateshead, Martin, it was never pretty.’
‘Aye, but what’s this got that Newcastle hasn’t?’
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